“The German artist Maria Vedder produced one of the highlights of the show. Sparkle and Fire was a five channel installation displayed on five floor level monitors forming an arc, projecting outwards to the viewer, in a large corner of the space. Behind the monitors, slide projectors described planes and lines with light slicing through the dimness. On the screens a continuous movement was created from right to left by the incredibly precise choreography under- taken during the shooting of the work. Every frame was always slowly becoming something else as its contents moved across the screen. A collage of feathers and smoke drifted, as the camera tracked, and became a jet of dust moving sidewards across first one monitor and then its neighbour and then its neighbour and so-on. When you looked back to the first monitors the process was repeated with another collection of objects or shimmering presences. Truly stunning and apparently seamless, the work was hypnotic, a real tour de force by one of Europe’s premier video artists. The ambient soundtrack, by Brian Eno echoed the visual properties of the work.”
Stephen Partridge, in: Variant issue 9 1991, about “Video Positive” in Tate Gallery Liverpool 1991

“The German artist Maria Vedder produced one of the highlights of the show. Sparkle and Fire was a five channel installation displayed on five floor level monitors forming an arc, projecting outwards to the viewer, in a large corner of the space. Behind the monitors, slide projectors described planes and lines with light slicing through the dimness. On the screens a continuous movement was created from right to left by the incredibly precise choreography under- taken during the shooting of the work. Every frame was always slowly becoming something else as its contents moved across the screen. A collage of feathers and smoke drifted, as the camera tracked, and became a jet of dust moving sidewards across first one monitor and then its neighbour and then its neighbour and so-on. When you looked back to the first monitors the process was repeated with another collection of objects or shimmering presences. Truly stunning and apparently seamless, the work was hypnotic, a real tour de force by one of Europe’s premier video artists. The ambient soundtrack, by Brian Eno echoed the visual properties of the work.”
Stephen Partridge, in: Variant issue 9 1991, about “Video Positive” in Tate Gallery Liverpool 1991